Thematic stamp collecting along conceptual lines has never really caught hold. There was a great gold medal collection making the rounds of the APS Champion of Champions shows several years ago entitled “Murder” where the collector sought to portray how murder was shown on stamps from individual murderers to genocide (such as the Holocaust). But few other thematic collections have tried the “concept” route, and today we are mostly stuck with thematics such as Birds on Stamps or Disney which really only use stamps as pictures in a scrapbook to illustrate the collection’s thematic point. From a historian’s or social scientist’s perspective, a good thematic collection could be far more satisfying than traditional philately. Research opportunities in most mainstream philatelic areas have either been done many times or else are relegated to the extreme fringes of postal history or plate varieties. Many subjects have never been collected philatelically and offer wonderful opportunities for collectors.
Famine, for instance, would be a great “concept” thematic. The collection could trace the history of food with various stamps illustrating different grains and the impact that the discovery of the America’s made on food production worldwide and the help that potatoes and corn had in feeding the world. Revenues for taxes on foodstuffs could be included. The collection could touch on climate and how warming and cooling trends affect food
production and how droughts create famine. The Irish potato famine would be a great specialized collection within the main collection along with the Irish diaspora, immigration to America, and the Irish contributions to this country which all came about because of the Potato Famine. The collection could touch on the difference between climate caused famines and political famines